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Yasuteru Yamada, a 72-year-old former anti-nuclear activist, will lead a band of pensioners to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant early next month to help clean up the site of Japan’s worst atomic disaster since World War II.
Yamada, a retired Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. (5405) plant engineer, is waiting for Tokyo Electric Power Co. to allow his volunteer “Skilled Veterans Corps” to carry out preliminary inspections at the plant after the government welcomed the move.

popsensation writes "I've been a programmer and systems analyst for almost 10 years now and I've always wondered if there is a place to go to report outages and downtime? My 6 bluehost accounts across 4 servers all went down a few minutes ago and I feel like there should be a resource to report this, as well as make sure someone has notified Bluehost. I always wonder when my Cox connection goes down if there is a place I can notify (via my phone tether) as well. Does any such service exist? What do people prefer? If not tell me what this service should do and I'll start writing it."

An anonymous reader writes "The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles — including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."

jackDuhRipper (67743) writes "What are the recommended libs and frameworks to use for an open identity and access control management system for web apps? There are existing user-data dbs. There are new web apps to be built in short order. OpenID and OAuth seem the way to go; where to start for authentication and app-by-app access controls?"

leetrout writes "SpaceX has successfully launched a two-stage rocket, the Falcon 9, into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 'Liftoff came after hours of delay, sparked initially by launchpad telemetry problems, then by a sailboat that strayed into a restricted area of the launch range. The day's first countdown was aborted at virtually the last second, due to a problem with the engine parameters, but the launch software was adjusted and a second countdown went all the way to the end.'"Update: 06/04 20:16 GMT by S: Reader mrcaseyj points out Spaceflight Now's coverage, which includes a number of pictures from the launch.

An anonymous reader writes "The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: 'The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well's channel.' It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."

wilsone8 writes "The New York Times includes an op-ed today arguing for Search Neutrality: 'Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's new Bing have become the Internet's gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include search neutrality: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.'"

An anonymous reader writes "My wife and I started an S Corp in 2009 mainly to provide small scale consulting services for friends with small businesses of their own (we build them websites and do odd technical jobs). Now that the year is closing I'm giving thought to our corporate tax filings which will be due March 15th. I've scoured the web for free/open source legal templates for hiring contractors, issuing W-2s, keeping shareholder minute meetings, etc, but haven't been able to find any decent sources. It seems like this should be a priority of the open source community since reducing the cost of entry into small business could drive open source development. What are the best sources of open source legal templates, tax filing software, corporate compliance templates, etc?" What experiences have others had with open sources businesses and the best way to consolidate the necessary corporate mojo into a workable model?

atmurray (983797) writes "I've done a bit of a write up on how to use Asterisk to make use of a provider locked Netgear TA612V ATA. It doesn't involve hacking the firmware or altering the ATA in any way and the concept is probably applicable to other devices. I don't believe (but I'm no lawyer!) there should be any legal concerns governing the method I suggest."Link to Original Source

jackDuhRipper (67743) writes "From Kash Hill: "Two new Facebook privacy issues have made their way onto my radar. I took advantage of one glitch to stalk peruse off-limits photo albums. Though most Facebook users have been made aware of the fact that the new privacy settings default to be quite open, many have not realized that this applies to their photo albums too.""

lkhwealth (1672546) writes "The present economic scenario and the ever-shrinking state of the global oil reserves is not good news for everyone. But on a positive note it makes us investigate for alternative energy sources that is become the solution of cutting down present and the future energy consumption, particularly in terms of fossil fuel usage like oil."Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "Here are 10 ways that you can start to lessen your utility bills by using less energy and water. You have probably heard some of these before but they are still worth repeating:"Link to Original Source

Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"